Dust Devils (18 page)

Then he nodded and shouted something into the dark mouth of the workshop. A blond boy of eight or nine ran out. Barefoot. Skinny legs protruding from gray shorts. Wearing a T-shirt with the South African rugby emblem on the front.

The mechanic pulled together the two iron doors of the workshop and padlocked them. Then he and the boy followed Goodbread to the truck. The man opened the rear door and sat, the boy sliding in after him, looking at Dell from under his pale fringe. Dell saw he had eyes as blue as robin's eggs.

Dell paid the attendant. Heard the man in the back talking in Afrikaans, telling the pump attendant he'd be back in an hour. The mechanic leaned forward, speaking to Dell. "Go past the cop shop, then take a right."

Dell drove by the police station, a dark cop with a paunch standing in the doorway, watching them with no expression. Dell turned into a road of brown houses with Dutch gables. Nobody on the street.

The boy started humming the intro to a TV show the twins used to watch. The mechanic told him to shut up. He did. The houses dribbled away and the road continued out into the emptiness. Dust swirled up around them and Dell closed his window. Heard his father coughing, battling for air.

After ten minutes the mechanic leaned over the back of Dell's seat and pointed a dirty finger toward a farm gate set into a barbed-wire fence. A FOR SALE sign hung on the fence, faded and rusted, with a bullet hole drilled through the middle. Dell stopped at the gate and the boy jumped down and opened it, the hinges tearing through rust.

Dell bumped the truck over a cattle guard. No sign of cattle. Stopped and waited for the boy to close the gate and run back to the vehicle. Took off toward a house that sat near a gap-toothed windmill. As they neared the house Dell could see it was unoccupied, and had been for a long time. The roof sagged and the windows were boarded up.

"Park by the back of the house," the mechanic said.

Dell stopped the truck and the men stepped out. The boy moved to follow his father, but the man shook his head. "Wait here." The boy stayed in the vehicle.

The mechanic led them across to the garage. A rusted metal door with a new padlock and silver chain. He unlocked the door and swung it open. The garage was empty but for a steel cabinet and a workbench standing against the far wall. The mechanic walked to the cabinet and opened it, speaking to Goodbread over his shoulder.

"What does the Major need?" Another of the crew who had followed Goodbread through Namibia and Angola. Making the world safe from communism.

"I want a pump-action, a rifle and two pistols."

"Not a problem."

The man took the selection of weapons from the cabinet and laid them on the work bench. Goodbread picked up the shotgun, inspecting it.

"While the Major chooses, I just want to have a word with my boy."

Goodbread nodded and the man walked out toward the truck, disappearing from view. Goodbread reached into the cabinet and found a box of red shells. Broke open the shotgun and loaded it. Then he hugged the wall and squinted through the gap between the garage door and the hinge.

"Boy, follow me."

Goodbread was walking, suddenly a younger man again. The way he'd been when the cops had arrived the night before. Energized. Dell followed his father toward the truck. The mechanic stood by the rear bumper, his back to them. Turning toward Goodbread, stowing something in his pocket.

Goodbread said, "Who you phoning, Jan?"

"No, nobody." Trying a smile.

"Give your phone to my boy," Goodbread said.

"Major, come on, you know me . . ."

Goodbread pumped the shotgun. The man reached into his pocket and took out the phone. Hesitated, then handed it to Dell, who looked down at the glass face of an aging Samsung, smeared with oil from the mechanic's fingers. Hit the green redial button and put the phone to his ear. A static hiss and then ringing.

A lazy voice said, "Police."

Dell killed the call, wondering whether this was the fat constable he had seen filling the doorway of the police station. "The cops," he said.

"I didn't even get through," the mechanic said.

Goodbread stared at him, shook his head. "You sorry son of a bitch. How much are they offering for us?"

The man shrugged. "TV said fifty thousand." Scratched at his stubble. "My wife's gone. I got debt."

"Real touching. If I had me a guitar I'd sing along and that's the God's honest truth." He coughed. "You and me need to take a walk, Jan."

"Major. Please."

The boy was alert now, sensing danger. Half sliding from the truck. "Pa?" Voice as high as a girl's.

"Stay there, Deon."

The child obeyed.

"You come with me and nothing will happen to your boy," Goodbread said. "Understand?"

The mechanic nodded. Looked at his son. Lifted a hand. Dropped it. Seemed about to say something, then he swallowed his words and turned and walked around the house, Goodbread a step behind him. Dell and the boy watched them disappear.

"Where they going, uncle?"

Dell couldn't find words. Saw those blue eyes staring up at him. Saw his dead children. The boy blinked at the blast from the shotgun. Dusty birds exploded from the roof of the house, black as shrapnel against the sky. Another bang. Then Goodbread walked back toward them, smoking pump-action dangling from his hand. Dell saw the boy was crying. Silently.

"Get in front, Deon," Goodbread said in Afrikaans. The boy did as he was told, obedient as a gundog. Goodbread leaned the shotgun against the front seat. "You wait here with the boy," he said to Dell and disappeared into the garage.

Dell slid in behind the wheel. The boy was shaking and tears tracked the dust on his face. Dell marveled at the layers of hell that were being revealed to him, day by day.

Goodbread returned carrying two more handguns and a rifle, his pockets bulging with ammunition. He got into the truck, the boy sitting between him and Dell. "Okay, let's go."

"Where?"

"Back to the highway."

"What about him?" Dell gestured with his head toward the child, who stared out the windshield, crying silently.

"Just drive."

"I won't let you hurt him."

"What the hell do you think I am?'

Dell could offer no answer. He started the truck. When they came to the gate Goodbread stepped down and opened it and closed it after them. Got back in and they bumped toward town. Dell found a backstreet that skirted the cop station and then they were past the town and back on the blacktop.

They drove for almost an hour in silence. The child shivered like he was freezing. In the distance Dell saw a car pulled up under the shade of a thorn tree. As they drew closer he could make out a man, a woman and three children sitting at a stone table, eating.

"Drive on until they can't read our license plate," Goodbread said, looking back over his shoulder.

Dell watched the picnickers recede to small dots in his rearview.

"This will work," Goodbread said.

Dell pulled over onto the shoulder and Goodbread cracked his door and stepped down. Motioned for the child to follow him. "You go down to that auntie and uncle. You hear me, boy?" The child nodded, looked at them both, then started walking, feet bare on the hot gravel.

Goodbread was back in the vehicle, door slapping shut. "Drive."

Dell drove.

Zondi, dressed in jeans and a clean shirt, a fresh pair of Reeboks on his feet, felt dizzy. He shut his eyes for a moment, blocking out the sunlight that blasted in at him though the windows of the hospital corridor. Had to steady himself against the wall. Took a breath and got a lungful of disinfectant and the bitter smell of death and disease.

All around him were wasted men and women in candy-striped pajamas. Shuffling along the corridor with thousand-yard stares. Slumped on benches. On the floor. In wheel chairs. Gaunt, hollow-cheeked. Skins patterned with lesions. Coughing through lips gummed by yeast infections thick as churned butter.

South Africa has the highest rate of HIV in the world and Bhambatha's Rock was at the epicenter, smack in middle of the worst-infected area. One in three people carried the virus. Years of ignorance, superstition, government apathy and misinformation had erased a generation, leaving babies to be raised by grandparents. A plague almost biblical in its ferocity.

Zondi's head throbbed and his body ached, but he was walking out of here. The people around him were not. He came to an unvarnished wooden door with a card pinned to it: DR. M. LAMBERT.

Marie? Martine?
He knocked.

"Yes. Come in, please." That accented voice.

He opened the door and found the blonde doctor sitting behind a metal desk, writing a report in a brown file. More files stacked beside her. A plastic bottle of mineral water and two glasses stood beside the files.

"Have a seat, Mr. – ?"

"Zondi. Disaster Zondi."

She looked up at him, frowning. "Disaster? Like something terrible?"

He sat. "Yes. It's a long story."

She allowed a distracted smile and rubbed at blue eyes smudged with fatigue. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay."

"Then you are lucky. The men you were with in the taxi are dead."

"I know."

"A trucker found you this morning and brought you here. Maybe you must talk with the police. Over in Dundee."

"Of course," he said. No way in hell.

The doctor was toying with a piece of paper. He saw it was the fax of the wedding invite. Torn and bloody. She held it up. "This was in your pocket, when you were admitted." A pause. "You are here to attend this wedding?"

"Maybe."

"From whose side of the family are you?"

"The girl's."

"Okay. And she is how old?"

"Sixteen, I think. Why?"

She tapped the invite. Hesitating before she spoke. "This man, the groom, he was a patient here, not so long ago."

The doctor stopped talking. Zondi waited for her to continue but she didn't. She rummaged in the desk drawer and found a container of pills and put them in front of him.

"For your headache." She poured some of her bottled water into a glass and pushed it across to Zondi. "Take two pills now." Standing. "If you show symptoms like nausea and dizziness, please to return here immediately. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good."

She gathered the stacked files and dropped them into a steel cabinet. Slammed the door shut. One file remained on the scuffed surface of the desk. "I must go now, to ward rounds." The doctor switched a smile on and off and left the room, closing the door after her.

Zondi sipped at the water. Didn't touch the pills. Looked at the buff colored folder, reading upside down: MAZIBUKO M. He slid the file across the desk and turned it to face him. Scanned it. Inja Mazibuko had been admitted to the hospital three months before with a bullet in his leg. Zondi turned a page. Came across the result of blood work. Didn't need a medical degree to see that not only was Inja HIV positive but his T-cell count was shot to hell. He had full-blown AIDS.

Zondi understood now why Inja was marrying the girl who looked so much like her mother.

Sunday felt as if she was in one of those dreams where time moved as slowly as a stream of dark mud. She sat on a blanket in the dust, weaving at the wooden loom, the betrothal beads whispering to her every time she moved.

Richard droned away in English, telling the small crowd of sweating white people that they should follow him to the beer ceremony that would conclude the tour. After she served the beer Sunday would hurry to where her bag waited in the hut. She would change her clothes and walk out to Sipho's car and freedom.

Sunday looked up from her weaving, staring past the pink faces with their sharp noses and pale eyes. Seeing something unusual. A black tourist. A tall man in expensive jeans and shoes. Standing at the edge of the group. She heard Richard speak to him and he answered in Zulu. But he was from the city, for sure, in those clothes.